AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Sunday, January 22, 2017

From The Sisters And Brothers Who Know The Face Of War First Hand- Celebrate Warrior Writers' Birthday!

1/19/2017 11:01 AM

After a decade of workshops, performances and books, we’re still going strong...

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A decade of transforming lives through art

It’s hard to believe the above photo was taken almost ten years ago, in April 2007. This Warrior Writers workshop—before we were even officially an organization—was at Green Door Studio, in Burlington, Vermont (Drew Cameron, co-founder of Combat Paper Project, is the veteran wearing the tan cap). Some of the writing produced here would go into Warrior Writers’ second anthology, Re-making Sense (2009).

2017 marks Warrior Writers’ ten year birthday! After a decade of workshops, performances and books, we’re still going strong—and we’re not slowing down any time soon.

How far we've come...

Before we share some of the exciting events planned for 2017, we’d like to reflect on what we accomplished over the past ten years:

We worked directly with over 5,000 veterans, service members and their families.
We hosted over 300 writing workshops and presented over 30 Working with Veterans 101 trainings. Warrior Writers participants have represented the organization on dozens of panel discussions.
We put on nearly 200 performances, at venues such as Busboys and Poets, NYC Poetry Festival, Nuyorican Poets Café, and Dodge Poetry Festival.
We published four anthologies of veteran writing and artwork, along with two chapbooks, one of which features writing from a workshop series in conjunction with the Kimmel Center’s 2016 presentation of Holding It Down: Veterans Dreams Project.
We've collaborated with highly-regarded organizations to include Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, Booklyn, Library of America, USO, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Opera Philadelphia, Kelly Writers House, and many universities, including Harvard, UPenn, Temple, Lycoming, Drexel and UMass.

Pictured: Warrior Writers artist Chantelle Bateman, reading in Camden, NJ, 2016

“Participating in Warrior Writers has been invaluable to me. I have found a fellowship of understanding and a sense of community. It has been a supportive space for me to express my creativity and find my voice.”
–Patrick Majid Doherty, Iraq War Veteran

Mark your calendars for 2017!

2017 takes us into exciting territory. We’ve got new programs in the works, along with some healthy organizational changes. Here are some highlights to keep on your radar:

Ongoing workshops in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. We’re also jumpstarting the New York City and Chicago workshops.
Our first of ten “birthday parties” will be held in Washington D.C. on February 9, 7 PM at Flashpoint/Mead Theater (916 G Street, NW). We’ll also be at the AWP convention (where we’ll be tabling from February 8 – 11).
Birthday party performances for Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, the Bay Area, and Colorado. Please contact us by March 1 if you’d like to host us, have an idea for another location or event, or would like to help.
Our 2017 series of USO workshops (each a weeklong), at Fort Belvoir and Walter Reed, will begin in April and run through October. We’ll hold a public art exhibition and poetry reading as a finale each week (follow us on Facebook for up-to-date event announcements).
A Desert Home Companion, a collaboration between Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz and Mural Arts, will continue through 2017. Come see a live performance on Independence Mall in Philadelphia on July 29, which will feature Warrior Writers, Iraqi musicians, and many other acts. A ten-episode radio series will follow.
We will again partner with the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences during their Annual Writers’ Workshop at UMass Boston, for our summer writing retreat, from June 26 - 30. Faculty have included Brian Turner, Bruce Weigl, Fred Marchant, Sean Davis and Larry Heinneman. We are excited to again be hosted by our friends at The Old Oak Dojo. Our Boston birthday party will be Friday, June 30. More details and registration will be available this spring.
We’re also excited to announce that Warrior Writers will be transitioning to a member-run co-op model later this year. We’ll be releasing more details on what our new model will look like in the coming months.

We’ll be celebrating our decade of successes all year long—but we’ll also be thinking about what we want the next ten years to look like. We want to reach even more veterans, service members and their families. In order to do this, we’ll be focusing on raising funds to extend more opportunities, hiring more veterans to our staff, and working on making our low-budget organization sustainable for the future.

Can you help us make 2017 our most successful year yet?

If you believe in our work, please consider becoming a sustaining donor. Your contribution will help veterans attend our retreats, in addition to feeding and housing them, as we never charge veterans to participate. It’s easy: just click here and you can choose how much to charge your card automatically on a monthly basis. Your gift of just $20 per month will sponsor a veteran’s housing, local travel, meals and materials for a whole weekend of camaraderie, creativity and wellness.

Please, donate now.